The Guardian and its journalists have topped a list of the top 50 most influential news tweeters, according to PR agency Portland and Tweetminster, with the BBC coming in second.

The Guardian and its journalists accounted for nine of the top 20 places, but the top spot when to a Sky News journalist. While the Guardian, Telegraph, Financial Times and Independent all features prominently in this news oriented list there is one notable exception that doesn’t: The Times, which seems to suggest this list isn’t quite a far ranging as it needs to be.

One explanation is that the Times with its anti social media paywall,with its content less likely to be shared. It only has one journalist in this list at number 35. That seems to be because the list is so news focused.

Although away from hard news there are obviously a number of high profile Times journalists and columnists on Twitter including @gilescoren @caitlinmoran @marcotti @oliverkaytimes @hugorifkind, @VictoriaPeckham and DAaronovitch among others.

Maybe Portland and Tweetminster need to widen the reference points of this to show a more representative list. It is odd that the Guardian’s Grace Dent appears for instance, but Caitlin Moran doesn’t.

Of course, this is one list, but it is an interesting one none the less.  The Independent manages to rack up at least three mentions. Surely that is something that should be of concern?

The index you can see in the image here (click to enlarge) shows the different focus on the various news organisations and where their tweets went.

The ‘Newstweet Index’ looked at more than 330,000 current affairs tweets from journalists, newspapers and TV news channels to come up with the list, which it will update on a quarterly basis.

The Guardian racked up a whopping 100,000 tweets in the three-month period as its tweets rode to the top of the chart through its coverage of the News of the World hacking scandal.

The BBC with 78,000 tweets came second. It featured less coverage of the hacking story, but according to the Tweetminister analysis featured more coverage of the uprising in Libya.

Tim Allan, managing director of Portland, said: “Twitter is fundamentally changing the way that stories break, spread and develop. It has allowed viewers and readers to absorb news through a much more direct relationship with journalists, and many figures who are normally off-camera have become prominent.”

The top five media organisations tweeting was completed by Sky News with 47,000, The Telegraph on 41,000 and The Independent on 27,000.

However, it was Sky News digital news editor Neal Mann (@fieldproducer) who was named the UK’s most influential journalist on Twitter withe the mediaguardian.co.uk (@mediaguardian) coming second in the rankings.

Not far behind was Guardian News & Media editor-in-chief Alan Rusbridger (@arusbridger). He was followed by BBC presenter Andrew Neil (@afneil) and the Guardian’s main news feed (@guardian) filled out the top five.